21Q: Dudamel & LA Philharmonic top Billboard, iTunes charts

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21Q

Daily posts from Bee writers on movies, theater, media, fashion, music and pop culture.

November 2, 2009

Dudamel & LA Philharmonic top Billboard, iTunes charts

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No doubt about it, Gustavo Dudamel is red hot.

No other conductor in recent history has gotten the same buzz.

In the months preceding his debut at the Los Angeles Philharmonic, his face was splattered over Cinemascope-sized billboards in Los Angeles.

That's a tactic typically associated with the expensive plugging of the next Will Smith or Ridley Scott pic.

That's a lot of hype for any conductor.

But sometimes, the bright and meteoric have this way of making crash landings.

Not Dudamel.

And the proof is in the pudding: ticket sales and recording stats.

His Oct. 8 gala concert at Walt Disney Hall, in a performance of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, was an artistic success. And a commercial one, too.

That performance, recorded by Deutsche Grammophon and released as a digital only recording on iTunes, went to the top of the charts.

In the first week of its digital release, the recording landed at #1 on Billboard's Classical Traditional and Classical Overall Charts. The album also reached #1 on iTunes Classical and #12 on Billboard's New Artist Chart, simultaneously.

Add this to the fact that Dudamel's concerts are as close to a sure-fire sell out as it gets in the biz... and the hordes of young patrons that flock to Disney Hall now... and you have the workings of a true classical music phenomenon.

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